http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IN the spring of 1994, the last full year of welfare as we knew it,
112,000 Massachusetts families were on the dole. In the spring of 2001,
the caseload stands at 41,500 -- a reduction of 63 percent. So
spectacular has the success of welfare reform been that it is easy to
forget how bitterly -- and with what moral posturing -- it was opposed.

"Stop the war on the poor!" hundreds of demonstrators chanted in
February 1995, as the Legislature took up Governor William Weld's bill
to impose a time limit on welfare benefits and require able-bodied
recipients to work. They found a receptive listener in House Speaker
Charles Flaherty, who fumed that Weld was "beating up on kids.... The
governor is using his bully pulpit to bully kids."

Earlier, the Massachusetts Council of Churches had denounced welfare
reform for being "out of line with the humanitarian traditions of
Massachusetts." Cambridge activist Jim Stewart, speaking for something
called the Poor People's Defense Committee, was less diplomatic. "The
governor is going to use the poor as a whipping post to curry favor with
the voting public," he charged. To make the point more forcefully, he
and other advocates dragged body bags into the Legislature and dumped
manure in the State House halls.

The enemies of reform warned that attaching conditions to welfare
would only make the lives of the needy more desperate. Time-limiting
benefits years was unrealistic, they cried. Forcing welfare mothers to
work was cruel. The inevitable result would be more poverty and
suffering, especially for children.

They were wrong and Weld -- who insisted that the safety net should
be a trampoline, not a hammock -- was right. The new law made it clear
to tens of thousands of welfare recipients that the free ride would no
longer be endless. It forced them to move toward self-sufficiency and
to give up the narcotic of a guaranteed government check.

What the reformers insisted on above all was the indispensability of
work -- any work -- even part-time, even minimum-wage, even volunteer --
in getting people off welfare and keeping them off. The best
preparation for a job, they repeated again and again, is a job -- not a
training program, not vocational education, not college. And they stuck
to their guns: In 1997, Weld vetoed a bill that would have allowed the
20-hour-a-week work requirement to be satisfied by taking classes. Last
year Governor Paul Cellucci vetoed a similar measure.

Now comes Acting Governor Jane Swift with a shrewd proposal to
soften the work mandate after all -- and to toughen it.

Swift's bill would allow welfare recipients who are subject to the
work requirement to satisfy half their weekly quota with education or
job training. But the time commitment would rise from 20 to 30 hours
per week.

More important, Swift's bill would also pave a gaping hole in the
welfare reform law. Until now, able-bodied recipients whose youngest
child on welfare is under 6 have not been required to do any work at all
-- even though they are subject to the two-year time limit. Result:
When the clock runs out, most of them are unprepared for real life.

"These are the families we are most concerned about," says Claire
McIntyre, the state's welfare commissioner. "We've been shortchanging
them since 1996. They use up their 24 months of benefits and then go
off welfare, without ever having learned how to support themselves.

No other state exempts welfare mothers from having to work until
their children turn 6. Swift isn't the only one who thinks
Massachusetts should start doing these women the kindness of making them
learn something about the world of employment. "Mothers of children age
2 to 6 should be required to work 20 hours per week," the Massachusetts
Taxpayers Foundation and United Way of Massachusetts Bay wrote in a
recent joint report. "Requiring them to participate in work, education,
or training programs while they receive benefits will better prepare
them for life after welfare."

True to form, the opponents of welfare reform began sniping at
Swift's proposal as soon as it was released. As always, they object to
anything that might make life on welfare more inconvenient -- and there
is no disputing that 20 mandatory hours of work per week is a lot more
inconvenient than 0 hours.

But life on welfare should be made inconvenient. Not because we want
to punish women for foolishly deciding to have a baby before they had a
husband and a job, but because we want to discourage their younger
sisters and friends from making the same choice. Yes, welfare reform
should be designed to get recipients off the dole. But it must also be
designed so that it sends a message: This is a lousy way to live.

McIntyre, who has spent 32 years in the welfare department, fears
the Legislature may be tempted to enact the substition of education for
work without extending the work requirement to all able-bodied
recipients. That, she says, would be disastrous.

"Work is the fastest route out of dependence. Nothing else can
touch it. The best preparation for a job is a job. I believe that so
deeply."